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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

What is art? another thread with food for thoughts…

nicolas claris

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Last Sunday, escaping from the Paris Boat show, and in order to try to get some more and really needed sources of knowledge, still trying not to die too stupid! we went to The Grand Palais to see the "Picasso et les Maîtres" exhibition. More on the exhibition (Oh how I love this portrait of Picasso!)

So while visiting among hundreds of people, we went in the dark place shown in the Iphone pic below, and imediately thoughts I had to report this in OPF. I t says:

"Academic teaching of beauty is false […] The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, nymphs and Narcissuses are so many lies.
Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what instinct and the brain imagine quite apart from that canon […]"
Pablo Picasso

IMG_0045.JPG

Handheld, real light! no flash ;-)

Of course the picture can be C&C, but I really like to know your thoughts about Picasso thinking there…
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
"Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what instinct and the brain imagine quite apart from that canon"

It's the instinct and imagination which is the start of vision that makes art. Picasso had already consumed all the rules and dogma of the great art schools and that's his place of departure.

Asher
 
D

David McKinny

New member
Interesting!

I thought it was a rather flowery way to say "Think outside the box"

But then I am a very literal engineering type ;-)

To an optimist, the glass is half full
To a pessimist the glass is half empty
To an engineer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be!
 
nicolas claris

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Hi David
in modern language I would have paraphrased as:
Get out of the mould!
or to mimic a computer brand leitmotiv: think different!

PS your engineer glass is quite optimistic, isn't it?-)
 
K

Ken Tanaka

pro member
That's a very nice image, Nicolas. (As an American with patriotic American images burned into my mind's eye my first millisecond impression was that the image was of a fellow reading and inscription at one of our Washington, D.C. monuments.)

Given the context of Picasso's work and times the quote resonates loudly. He had some real brass balls (which he reportedly used frequently) to swim against the current of his times. But we've had 60+ years of various forms of modernist movements that have since obliterated the rigid dogma that Picasso, and so many of his contemporaries, struggled to escape. Nobody any more learns to paint, draw, or sculpt in the classical styles that were the principal target of his remark.

Today, however, the quote probably presents a far different meaning to young eyes. I suspect, based partly on what I see young artists doing in school and slightly beyond school, that such expressions are used as emotional license to defend mediocre work. That is, work propelled by very weak intellectual energy and a desire just to look different and thereby try to command representation. That's true of every art form today.

The languishing world economy will, I believe, have a strong and overdue disinfecting affect on the art world during the coming years. This month's Art Miami (which is a ridiculous extension of Art Basel) already suggested that this is happening.

So I do not offer inspiration from "think outside the box" slogans any more. Rather, I suggest that young people just find a damn box that suits their psyche.
 
Cem_Usakligil

Cem_Usakligil

Well-known member
Well said

Ken Tanaka said:
That's a very nice image, Nicolas. (As an American with patriotic American images burned into my mind's eye my first millisecond impression was that the image was of a fellow reading and inscription at one of our Washington, D.C. monuments.)

Given the context of Picasso's work and times the quote resonates loudly. He had some real brass balls (which he reportedly used frequently) to swim against the current of his times. But we've had 60+ years of various forms of modernist movements that have since obliterated the rigid dogma that Picasso, and so many of his contemporaries, struggled to escape. Nobody any more learns to paint, draw, or sculpt in the classical styles that were the principal target of his remark.

Today, however, the quote probably presents a far different meaning to young eyes. I suspect, based partly on what I see young artists doing in school and slightly beyond school, that such expressions are used as emotional license to defend mediocre work. That is, work propelled by very weak intellectual energy and a desire just to look different and thereby try to command representation. That's true of every art form today.

The languishing world economy will, I believe, have a strong and overdue disinfecting affect on the art world during the coming years. This month's Art Miami (which is a ridiculous extension of Art Basel) already suggested that this is happening.

So I do not offer inspiration from "think outside the box" slogans any more. Rather, I suggest that young people just find a damn box that suits their psyche.
Click to expand...
Hi Ken,

You have the talent to express this so clearly and right to the point; thank you for that. Not that it matters but I agree wholeheartedly nevertheless.

BTW, being a business professional, I almost start to retch when I am confronted with clichés such as “thinking outside the box”. I would much rather that they actually think albeit inside a box, any box! ;-).


Cheers,
 
K

Ken Tanaka

pro member
Nicolas Claris said:
With very few pixels of an iPhone!;-)
Click to expand...
Rather remarkable, eh?

Brief iPhone anecdote: Not long ago I had the opportunity, with a small group of mostly photo collectors and curators, to spend an evening with a very accomplished and renowned art photographer. Toward the end of his talk he began showing some new work he had created with his iPhone! It looked very good, like yours. During dinner he lamented that he had exchanged his original unit (which broke) for a new units --twice-- which did not produce the same quality of images as the original. A couple of folks at the table suggested that he approach Apple's HQ directly about this issue. But he reacted to the suggestion as though he was being offered a dose of the ebola virus fearing that, although Apple would probably fix his problem, they'd also try to turn his use of an iPhone into a big promo campaign ("Like that Joel Myerowitz and HP!", in his own words). I can't reveal his name (for obvious reasons) but his reaction was hilarious.

Or simply a real vision of their own and the technic skills/deviations to express it…?
Click to expand...
Yup, that would be a "box". But I tend to see mimicry, particularly in photography. More head-on, dead-pan "portraits" ala Rineke Dijkstra, more banal scenes ala Stephen Shore, more fictive ad-like scenes with colors and contrasts cranked to the edge.

I suppose that this is basically how artistic dogma is created, eh?
 
D

David McKinny

New member
Ken,
I agree with your comments about modern artists. I never really had any appreciation for art until a trip to Paris a few years ago. I was doing the tourist thing and visiting the Louvre. Somewhere on the long walk down the hall to the Mona Lisa I discovered a spark of appreciation. I don't know how much I get classic art, but I at least get something. Maybe I'm not yet sophisticated enough, or I am too literal to understand the symbology of more modern art forms, but the classic paintings and sculptures I have seen simply amaze me.

Cem,
I have used the following analogy at work, to try to teach my team about intellectual curiosity and creativity. It starts with a question......

What's the difference between a cook and a chef? If each are given the same resources, kitchen, equipment, produce, spices etc. what separates them? A cook can make anything you want, and usually very well, when given a recipe. The chef on the other hand does not need a recipe. The chef will create unique dishes from knowledge, experience and creativity.

Whether it is my profession, or my hobby, I want to become like the chef. To "think outside the box" is too simplistic, and as you say cliche. I hope to become truly creative, not just different, and I suspect much of what I need to learn will come from this forum. Thanks in advance for the education ;-)
 
M

Michael Fontana

pro member
Let's not forget, that the sentences is just a cut-out out of a entire interview and out of context:

"L'enseignement académique de la beauté est erroné.
La beauté du Parthénon, des Venus des Nymphes des Narcisses sont autant de mensonge.
L'art n'est pas l'application d'un canon de beauté mais ce que l'instinct et le cerveau peuvent concevoir indépendamment de ce canon"


To me it looks like a comment in the discussion of academic classsizism, as the Parthenon, the Venuses, nymphs and Narcissuses are part of that art form.

Picasso stated for the very same Parthenon:

"The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonades and sculptures were added because there were people in Athens who happened to be working and wanted to express themselves. It is not what the artist does that counts, but what he is. Cezanne would never have interested me a bit if he had lived and thought like Jacques Emile Blanche, even if the apple he painted had been ten times as beautiful. What forces our interest is Cezanne's anxiety - that's Cezanne's lesson; the torments of Van Gogh - that is the actual drama of the man. The rest is a sham." (Cashiers de Art, Conversation Avec Picasso, 1949)

Jacques-Émile Blanche was a french painter, who became famous for his portraits of the european rich class, after 1890.
 
I

Ivan Garcia

New member
David McKinny said:
Interesting!

I thought it was a rather flowery way to say "Think outside the box"

But then I am a very literal engineering type ;-)

To an optimist, the glass is half full
To a pessimist the glass is half empty
To an engineer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be!
Click to expand...

To an artist, the glass is restricting the natural flow of the water.
 
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